A Commentary on the Passing Scene by
Robert Paul Wolff
rwolff@afroam.umass.edu

Coming Soon:

The following books by Robert Paul Wolff are available on Amazon.com as e-books: KANT'S THEORY OF MENTAL ACTIVITY, THE AUTONOMY OF REASON, UNDERSTANDING MARX, UNDERSTANDING RAWLS, THE POVERTY OF LIBERALISM, A LIFE IN THE ACADEMY, MONEYBAGS MUST BE SO LUCKY, AN INTRODUCTION TO THE USE OF FORMAL METHODS IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.Now Available: Volumes I, II, III, and IV of the Collected Published and Unpublished Papers.

NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON KANT'S CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for "Robert Paul Wolff Kant." There they will be.

NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON THE THOUGHT OF KARL MARX. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for Robert Paul Wolff Marx."

Total Pageviews

Archive of Wolff Materials

Saturday, March 1, 2014

A REPLY TO JERRY FRESIA

In a long comment to the conclusion of my two-part post,
Jerry Fresia asks a deep and important question to which there are no easy
answers.Here is his entire comment:

"“This effort, if it is to succeed, must be
grounded in the simple ideas set forth in my Credo….” You probably mean more
than “ground in ideas,” but it is “ideas” -as abstractions - that get all the
credit. This sole emphasis on ideas generally troubles me.One of the nice thing about your analyses is
that you regularly make reference to non-ideas as having revolutionary import.
Let’s call these non-ideas “simple pleasures;” simple, much like the ideas in
your Credo, in that they are available to everyone and fundamental to the
living of a just life in a just society. For example, I loved the distinction you made
between “hearing a sound” and “making a sound.” The latter issues in a “special
pleasure,” you say – and here I infer that that special pleasure cannot be
available to the listener in the same way. You have shown to us the Marcusean argument
“that the great works of art, literature, philosophy and music of our cultural
tradition play an essential and unexpectedly subversive role….these works keep
alive, in powerful and covert ways, the fantasies of gratification, the promise
of happiness, the anger at necessary repression, on which radical political
action feeds,” and which awakens “the unquenchable thirst for liberation from
which social progress must come.” And then there’s the story of Archimedes
whose chief concern is that the Roman soldiers do not disturb “his circles.”Can we say, then, that “this effort” will
spring not just from the ideas of your Credo but also, and necessarily, from
the simple pleasures that each of us come to cherish all the while living
within the womb of capitalism?"

Let me broaden Jerry's question in a way that
does not, I think, do violence to it:To
what motivations, what sources of psychic energy, can we appeal in seeking to
move men and women to truly transformative social action?[I refrain from using the more familiar
adjective "revolutionary" because of its complex associations in
Western political discussions.]There
are two such sources with which I am familiar, and which have again and again
served as the motivating springs for great and rapid social change:The first is religious fervor, which surely
has, in its various forms, brought larger social change more rapidly than any
other single force unleashed on the world.The second is powerful, deep-rooted emotions, whether anger and hatred
stemming from ressentiment, or hope
springing from the dream of liberation.We
saw the first at work in the rise of Nazism and the second in the French
Revolution.

It is almost certainly not the case that
rational self-interest can serve that purpose. Men and women guided by calculations of gain
and loss tend to make small, cautions moves.As I remarked in my mini-tutorial on Marcuse, "Workers of the
World, Unite! You have nothing to lose
but your IRAs.You have an incremental
improvement in your standard of living to gain!" is not a rallying cry
likely to draw many thousands to its banner.

Marcuse argues, persuasively in my judgment,
that art keeps alive fantasies of liberation and omnipotence, by virtue of
their form [not their content!] that fuel revolutionary action.It is more generally true that music, dance,
theater, poetry, novels, and the visual arts play an essential role in
mobilizing and sustaining the non-rational sources of effective social action.That old familiar boast from the '60s -- We
have all the good songs -- expresses an important truth.Where are the folk songs of the Tea Party, of
the anti-abortion forces, of the neo-con celebration of endless imperial war?No general truth of this sort is without its
exceptions.I will give the imperialists
Rudyard Kipling.But the fact remains
that Rational Choice Theory in any of its guises cannot explain whymen and women risk their lives on picket lines
or at the barricades.

About Me

As I observed in one of my books, in politics I am an anarchist, in religion I am an atheist, and in economics I am a Marxist. I am also, rather more importantly, a husband, a father, a grandfather, and a violist.